Medicaid Fund Loss Averted

December 04, 1991|By JOHN A. MacDONALD; Courant Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Connecticut will be eligible for more than $200 million in additional Medicaid payments from the federal government as the result of a last-minute change in legislation passed just before Congress wrapped up for the year.

The money will be especially welcome because of the state's tight budget, Senate aides and state officials said Tuesday. Loss of the money would have been a disaster for the state, said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn.

Aides to Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. in Washington and Connecticut agreed the efforts of Lieberman and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., were crucial in preserving the state's ability to receive the extra money by winning a change in Medicaid legislation while it was in the Senate Finance Committee.

Several of those involved said that during committee consideration of the bill, Sen. David F. Durenberger, R-Minn., offered an amendment that would have precluded any state from amending its Medicaid plan after Sept. 30.

Durenberger's amendment was to controversial legislation that would severely limit states' ability to use certain taxes to pay for Medicaid, which pays for the health care of 27 million poor people.

Connecticut would not be adversely affected by the main focus of the legislation. But Durenberger's amendment -- dealing with a separate, extremely technical issue -- would have cost the state as much as $206 million, congressional aides said.

As soon as they became aware of the issue, Weicker aides in Washington, along with Dodd and Lieberman, began working to get Durenberger to modify his amendment. They also had to persuade the federal Office of Management and Budget and the Health Care Financing Administration, which was trying to clamp down on state use of the taxes to expand Medicaid. Connecticut Rep. Nancy L. Johnson, R-6th District, helped grease the deal with House Republicans.

An aide said Durenberger's objective was to end abuses in reimbursements to hospitals that care for an especially large number of Medicaid patients. The aide said that once Durenberger

was satisfied that Connecticut's requests fell within Medicaid standards, he had no problem changing the effective date of his amendment to Nov. 26, thus accommodating Connecticut and several other states.

An official of the Health Care Financing Administration, which oversees Medicaid, confirmed that the agency had agreed to the change in Durenberger's amendment. The official said Gail Wilensky, the agency director, was pleased by the overall bill Congress adopted.

That measure limits states ability to pay their share of Medicaid through money collected from hospitals as taxes or voluntary contributions. The administration had called some of these fund-raising arrangements scams because the hospitals get back more than they contributed.